Starry starry night

Although the season is less than three weeks old, Metropolitan Opera audiences may hear nothing else this season as beautiful as Peter Mattei’s “Song to the Evening Star.” The Swedish baritone’s slightly eccentric, always meltingly lovely Wolfram was the shining highlight of the return Thursday evening of Wagner’s Tannhaüser after an absence of 11 years.

No doubt upset at the recent paucity of performances one jaded local wag quipped that the Met no longer does Wagner but indeed it does except perhaps not in the abundance many would want nor in comparison to the overflowing ubiquity Donizetti will be enjoying this season. Other prickly Met observers who mourn that General Manager Peter Gelb is “killing” opera through challenging post-modern productions will no doubt salute the chance to sample again this once much-loved, solidly traditional Otto Schenk mounting of Tannhaüser, now 38 years old.

While dramatically quiescent, this season’s revival now directed by Stephen Pickover looked faded if handsome, the striking second-act Hall of Song set by Günther Schneider-Siemssen (who died this summer) still drew an appreciative gasp or two along with a smattering of applause—though that might have been for the entrance of Eva-Maria Westbroek’s earnest Elisabeth.

Palpitating with emotion, the Dutch soprano commanded the lumbering protagonist of Johan Botha—and the performance itself—to spring to life. Her vividly flesh-and-blood maiden dominated her scenes with touching simplicity, and her starkly forthright defense of Tannhaüser impressively quieted the ominous threats of the massed all-male forces determined to destroy him. She then made Elisabeth’s long, wrenching final exit (long associated with Leonie Rysanek who originated the production) very much her own.

Alas, would that her singing had been as absorbing as her acting! As her unfortunate Santuzza earlier this year also demonstrated, the voice has darkened, gotten bigger but less steady. The top, while never her glory, is now worn and frayed. She might more carefully negotiate passages that challenge her, but her characteristic generosity as a performer emboldens her to take risks. One admires this passionate commitment while at the same time yearning for a more focused, more pleasing sound. The shining radiance of an ideal Elisabeth appears no longer to be hers to offer.

Although displaying admirable vocal security, Michelle de Young’s Venus (the sole holdover from the 2004 revival) did not fall very alluringly on the ear. Her stentorian approach made it hard to differentiate her harangues from her seductions, particularly when the yearning “Geliebter, komm!” was addressed to the parterre boxes rather than to Botha. Venus’s arduous final pages emerged pressed and squally, and her grossly unbecoming 1970s showgirl costume should have been reconsidered.

The Shepherd whose winsome song opens the second scene of the first act was Kathleen Battle’s Met debut role and has also been sung there by Roberta Peters and Dawn Upshaw. Ying Fang and her sweetly appealing soprano has already shown signs that she too might become an important Met fixture even though she is still a member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Her pure-voiced Shepherd proved just as winning as her Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro had on opening night last season.

The heavy vocal demands of the title role are surely among the major reasons that Tannhaüser is heard far less today than it once was. Recently both the Royal Opera in London and Chicago’s Lyric Opera have turned to South African tenor Botha to be their haunted minstrel. While no one can dispute his vocal gifts, Botha’s awkward, often distracted stage presence has occasionally caused disdain among some audience member.

That said, Friday’s Met performance suggested that the tenor connects intensely with this role as he gave a more concentrated, committed portrayal than is his wont. One felt a real connection between him and Westbroek in their duet, and the Rome narrative was delivered with a despairing intensity. Although he started out with some unsteadiness, he quickly was delivering strong ringing tones and showing admirable stamina sounding fresher at the end than he had at the beginning. While one can imagine a portrayal that would more movingly delineate Tannhaüser’s crushing inner struggle (the soul of the opera), one was grateful to Botha for singing the grueling role so fearlessly.

While the previous Met revival was marred by Thomas Hampson’s smarmily noble Wolfram, Mattei’s avoided that pitfall by showing us a more human, more affable man. Even though it seemed to be in less than peak form (there were fleeting insecure moments in the second act), his buttery baritone consistently ravished the ear. If it lacked the revelatory power of his recent Amfortas, his marvelous Wolfram alone is reason enough to attend one of this revival’s remaining six performances or its HD transmission on Halloween.

Another compelling reason would be to catch rising Austrian bass Günther Groissböck’s first Wagner role at the Met. As the Landgraf, a role often filled by elder basses, the handsome and vigorous Groissböck poured out floods of dark, rich tone making one eager to hear his acclaimed Baron Ochs, due at the Met next season.

Tannhaüser had not been performed at the Met since the final season in the old opera house when this production premiered in 1977 with James Levine on the podium. His return to the opera for the first time since 1997 would have been enough to make this season’s revival newsworthy. However, while the conductor’s cautious resumption of his Met duties had been proceeding, alarming news arrived recently that he would be renouncing the upcoming new production of Berg’s Lulu to concentrate solely on Tannhaüser as he found the rigors of both too exacting. Needless to say, how Levine would fare was much on the minds of those in Thursday’s audience.

He looked frailer as his wheelchair turned to the crowd before the overture, and the orchestra sounded decidedly under-par for much of the first act (which also included a loud, unexplained noise emanating from the stage for about 30 seconds). The strings played with surprisingly thin tone in the usually ripe Venusburg ballet which was further undone by Norbert Vesak’s wanly anti-erotic choreography.

The ensemble was also shaky, though that was perhaps due to the production’s use of scrims. Levine’s gestures were uncharacteristically wild, particularly the flailing of his left arm, although they eventually calmed down a bit. Happily, with the scrim absent, act two was much stronger, the choral ensemble following Tannhaüser’s outburst building impressively to a shattering climax, and the final act’s somber prelude was particularly evocative.

Despite the evening’s eventual success, Levine’s continued compromised presence as the Met’s Music Director remains upsetting. Though he can apparently still command a difficult work like Tannhaüser, the toll looks to be severe. Surely dropping out of Lulu, one of his favorite works, suggests that current situation may be dire, and I doubt that anyone expects him to take part in the upcoming Die Fledermaus. In the meantime one prays that this uneven but satisfying Wagner run under Levine will continue—and prosper—without incident.

Photos by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.